Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [393]
And then he saw the strangest thing. Savva Suvorin entered the square and walked close by them. As he drew near, he gave the priest a curt nod, almost as he might to an employee. But instead of ignoring him, both the priest and Paul Popov suddenly turned and bowed low. Nor was there any mistaking the meaning of their gesture. It was not the polite bow that Misha made to the priest, and the priest to him. It was the bow of servant to master, of employee to paymaster. And they had both given it, father and son, to the former serf.
And then Misha understood.
It was at just this moment that the long awaited sled came in through the gates of Russka and jingled across the square.
Misha ignored it. He could not resist the sudden impulse that had suddenly taken hold of him. He had never cared for the redheaded priest, and this opportunity was too perfect. He strode across the market place and, just as the priest reached the centre, accosted him in a loud voice.
‘Tell me,’ he cried, ‘how much is it? How much do Suvorin and his Old Believers pay you for giving up your congregation to them?’
The priest went scarlet. He had hit!
But Misha never received his answer. For at that moment there was an excited shout from the far side of the square, where the newspapers were being unloaded. And as they all turned, a voice excitedly cried out: ‘It’s official. From the Tsar. The serfs are going to be freed.’
And Misha forgot even the priest, and hastened across the square.
Fathers and Sons
1874
With a slow hiss and clank the train approached the ancient city of Vladimir, and the two unexpected visitors gazed out with curiosity.
It was spring. The snow had mostly departed, but here and there they saw drifts, or long greyish slivers, across the terrain. All the world, from the peeling white walls of the churches to the brown fields by each hamlet had an untidy, blotchy look. There were huge puddles everywhere; rivers had overflowed their banks and the roads, turned into quagmires, were almost impassable.
Yet if, upon earth, all movement had temporarily ceased, the skies were full of traffic. Over the woods where light green buds had appeared, seemingly overnight, on the bare silver birches, the air was full of the raucous cries of birds who came flocking and wheeling over the forest. For this was the Russian spring, and the rooks and starlings were returning.
The journey had been long, but the two travellers were in good spirits. The train conductor – a tall, thin man with round shoulders, large ears, flat feet, and a strange habit of cracking his knuckles – had engaged their attention; and long before they reached Vladimir, young Nicolai Bobrov had refined his imitation of this man until it was a fine art.
Nicolai was twenty; a handsome, slim young man with the Bobrovs’ regular faintly Turkish features, a small, neatly trimmed moustache, a soft, pointed beard, and a mass of dark brown, wavy hair. His blue eyes and pleasant mouth looked manly.
His companion, though only twenty-one, looked a little older. He was a thin, rather sulky-looking fellow about two inches taller than Nicolai, with a shock of bright ginger hair. His face was cleanshaven. His mouth was thin, his teeth small, rather yellowish and uneven. His eyes were green. But the thing one noticed most, after the first glance, was the area around the eyes, which was slightly puffy, as if he had been punched at birth and never quite recovered.
When the train arrived at Vladimir, the two men got out and Nicolai went in search of transport. Horses were not enough, for they had a considerable quantity of heavy luggage, and he was gone over an hour before he eventually returned with a grumpy peasant driving a carriage so battered it was